L'Arrière-pays
Safia Benhaim
2009 - 48 min - Mini DV - Couleur - France

End of the day, French countryside. A woman, my mother, walks in Morvan landscape, where she chose to live because it reminds her of her motherland, Morocco. Communist refugee, opponent of King Hassan II regime, she has lived more than 20 years in exodus. In these beloved Morvan landscape, memories of the other country are going to pop up.
She invents a country with her exile memories, a country that does not exist, between memory of a missing land and presence of another, between a far away childhood and an upcoming utopia. An inside land, a mental geography and time, the one and only country of the exile woman, grows. "And I would say that even if the hinterland remains unattainable to me – and, even if it doesn’t exist – it can be located, if I give up on the ordinary geography rules." ("Hinterland", Yves Bonnefoy).